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German, C2+ (correspondence course) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6076 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 1 of 68 10 February 2011 at 10:43am | IP Logged | ||
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I've decided to separate my German from my French-TAC log. They're starting to run together and I've been so busy lately that it's difficult to see where I am in either language, so I've decided to start a log for German.
Background: I've been living in Germany for 11 years. I've never really studied German, and I don't owe anything to any particular program. I've just always had my eyes and ears open and I'm always speaking (a lot)... and reading (for the fun of it). In 2006 I did the TestDaf and passed with TDN 5. TestDaf ist recognised almost by default as "C1". I'd argue that TDN 5 is closer to C2. My writing leaves something to be desired, however. I got a 4. My writing needs improvment. I've been tutoring German students on Friday, so I'm already getting a lot of "exercise" in Rechtschreibung, Aufsatz, Beschreibung, Charakteristik, etc. I'm helping them to improve their German writing, so I've decided to take advantage of the opportunity and improve my writing, too. I wish the class would continue, because I'll never get a better "Crash-Kurs" in German grammar. (That's why I've decided to start this log -- I have to keep track of it all!) ALAS, the class will end with summer break and from that point I'll be reading a lot, by choice. Book list will follow. I've ordered a book to help me with my writing. (It's just a book how to use the various building blocks of speech and change them around to make better sentences.) I'm currently using a lot of different Schulbücher (5 or so) for Grammatik because I spend a lot of time preparing Aufgaben for the students that I have, and since they're all at different levels I've got a lot of books. Like I said, it's great excercise for me. Damit habe ich genug Englisch geschrieben. Meine Ausdrucksfähigkeit lässt wirklich etwas zu wünschen übrig aber ich merke, dass ich mich seit Anfang des Kurses große Mühe gebe und von daher, könnte eine Verbesserung gut alleine kommen. Ich mache zu viele Rechtschreib-Flüchtigkeitsfehler und weil mir diese Stelle ganz plötzlich in die Hände gelegt wurde, muss ich solche Fehler aber ruck-zuck schnell beseitigen :) Ich kann mich ziemlich gut selbst korrigieren und mit ein bisschen Übung, klappt es ganz gut mit längeren Sätzen. Mit zunehmenden Wortschatz wird die Wortwahl dann auch besser. Wenn ich innerhalb von sechs Monaten ein gutes Argument schreiben könnte...nun...das wäre wünschenswert, auf jeden Fall. Ich soll viel Lesen (auch Zeitungen, Zeitschriften, etc.) Vor allem muss ich auf das Niveau aufpassen. Finger weg von der Bild ;). Goethe Institut hat sicher ein Liste von Büchern, die für die Oberstufe zu empfehlen sind. Ich bin noch bei Krabat und obwohl das ein Jugendbuch ist, lese ich es meiner Tochter laut vor, und wir heben alle unbekannten Wörtern aus dem Text hervor -- gut für uns beiden. Spannend ist es auch. EDIT: I'm a really big comma-splicer in all languages. That's gonna improve ;) Edited by Sunja on 22 February 2011 at 3:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ummagumma Senior Member IrelandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5247 days ago 217 posts - 241 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 2 of 68 10 February 2011 at 11:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Ich bin auch ein Deutschlerner, aber ich bin nicht so gut als du!
Ich wünsche dir viel Erfolg und ich bin sicher du wird dein Ziel erreichen. Ich lese gern deine Einträge, damit mich auf dienen Fortschritt freue. Ciao Paul 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6076 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 3 of 68 10 February 2011 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, Paul! I keep finding mistakes in my post, so I've still got a ways to go! I'll try to write more and call the mistakes as I see them.
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| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6076 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 4 of 68 12 February 2011 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Friday I spent about an hour going over some Aufgaben for the 7th and 8th year: mostly Satzteilen (Attribute, Adverbiale Bestimmungen, Objekten).
I got a workbook already, Ausdrucksfähigkeit, KDS from the CHRISTOS KARABATOS-Verlag to help me fill in any gaps in my grammar. The book doesn't provide any explanation -the publisher does want to sell more books- but I think I can manage with the internet and a good German Duden. I've done the first pages of the Lückentext Aufgaben for prepositions. The harder ones are the Kausale & Modale Präpositionen. I had trouble with angesichts, aufgrund, wegen, aus. All in all I was able to feel my way through 60 of the excercises and missed about 9. I have to look around for some more examples of "entsprechend, gemäß, laut, nach, zufolge" I thought a few fo them are interchangeable, but the book only wanted one answer and I'd like to study up to find out why. I'll probably be getting a nicer grammatik Dudenlike one of these, maybe. We'll see. I may just go to the library for the time being. The list of präpositionalen Ausdrücken/Phrasen is really good, and I plan to share it with some of the students I have. The book counts my "MIT Bezug auf" as wrong, using the "IN Bezug auf". I checked the Duden for an explanation and it shows auf etwas Bezug haben/nehmen (sich auf etwas beziehen), Bezug nehmend od. bezugnehmend auf (mit Bezug auf). I just have to remember that. Luckily that was the only really, barely noticeable and yet wrong grammatical tidbit out of the prepositional phrase excercises. There's still five more pages of fill-in-the-blank prepositions that I haven't done yet. A really good excercise that I'm looking forward to is building sentences out of Wortfetzen. That's on page 106. I'm still on 14. Edited by Sunja on 12 February 2011 at 4:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6076 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 5 of 68 13 February 2011 at 11:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Still working on filling in the grammar gaps, and while doing that this morning I've mapped out a plan.
To update my certification in German I've decided to go with the Goethe Institut and not the IHK. The IHK hasn't really responded to my requests for information and has instead directed me to the Arbeitsamt. I'm already employed and working, so I can't go there. (They'd want me to register before giving me advice about an Ausbildung.) So Goethe Institut is -the only- direction, and here's what I would need. Listening and speaking aren't a problem so I'm not going to work on those. Reading comprehension and writing: I'm working on Krabat and when I've finished I'd like to submit an Interpretation or some other essay-type excercise to Lang-8. The chances of me catching someone who's read it are (who knows), but at least the grammar/Rechtschreibung will be checked and that's good enough for now. If I advance my writing far enough I'll need to hire someone to check it, and I already have someone in mind. She's a graduate of Germanistik and she's expensive. I had her do a blurb for my art broschure last summer and it cost me 20 euros. I can imagine a whole page-full of text would cost me 40. "GuteFrage.net" ("can somebody check my writing please") kann hier nicht helfen. Quality muss sein and I'll have to pay to have a good correction. Problem area, Vokabeln: I really have to up the ante and take on a major amount of vocabulary for the Oberstufe. I've never really worked on word aquisition (not since 2006) and my active vocab is -- really not fit for C2. The fastest way to take on words are Übersetzungsaufgaben and reading. Wirtschaftssprache Englisch is a book of translation excercises that students use to prepare for the job of Fremdsprachkorrespondent and it's dry and boring but the book offers a huge amount of practice material from a lot of different sources, ranging from "easy" to "difficult". I'm starting with "easy". This small snippet took me a few minutes. I didn't use a dict, except for the word "oligopoly". Im Geschäft entwickelt sich wirtschaftliche Macht im Zusammenhang mit dem Wachstum von großen Unternehmen, eine Macht die - in Extremform - eine monopolistische Marktstruktur konstruiert, das heißt ein Lieferant, der den ganzen Markt dominiert. Solch ein ähnliche Machtstruktur, obwohl nicht ganz so extrem, ist das Oligopol, in dem ein relativ kleinere Anzahl von Firmen einen specifischen Markt dominiert. And here's the book's suggested translation: Im Geschäftsleben entwickelt sich ökonomische Macht mit dem Wachstum der Kapitalgesellschaft, eine Macht, welche in ihrer extremen Form eine monopolistische Marktstruktur darstellen kann, d.h. ein Lieferant kontrolliert den gesamten Markt. Eine ähnliche, derartige Machtstruktur, wenngleich nicht so extremer Art, ist das Oligopol, in dem eine verhältnismäßig kleine Zahl von Firmen einen bestimmten Markt beherrscht. So, da haben wir einiges! With these exercises I can check my Wortwahl and Satzbau. Redundancies and bad choice of words I can easily correct with practice. The other thing would be for me to read,read, read. I'll get a book list from Goethe I. and take it with me to the library when I finish doing the grammar excercises. Edited by Sunja on 13 February 2011 at 11:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6076 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 6 of 68 13 February 2011 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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After writing that HUGE personal plan for autodidatic study I'm now considering a Fernkurs :p Goethe offers them. I haven't decided yet, but I sent in a request for a Beratung. The price is reasonable 500 with the current Ermäßigung and a Betreuung that lasts 9 months. I can't pay in Raten, unfortunately, but at 50 euros a month it's not a bad deal. I'd be prepared to pay someone to help me with my writing, anyway, and here it's more targeted preparation for the actual prüfung. Too bad I didn't see the site before I wrote that huge plan. It's good to have choices. Either way I'm covered. We'll see what I decide..
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| Meelämmchen Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5074 days ago 214 posts - 249 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 7 of 68 13 February 2011 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||
And I also think it is now and then a bit too 'complicated'. I had a look into it but to stay at the example: Just "Eine ähnliche, derartige Machtstruktur" is sounding very, very strange, having strong pleonastic tendencies, and not to mention the comma use. Or "Im Geschäftsleben" I would rather translate with "In der Wirtschaft." Just two examples. Or your "konstruieren" is perhaps even better than "darstellen". The guy is talking about a monopolistic power structure being "dargestellt", -- hello? -- which to me sounds as it would exist only on paper. (I would put "konstituieren" in there.) And last but not least: spezifische und bestimmte is actually interchangable (it is just z instead of c). I would really consider using another book. I really have the impression it's just not well written after all. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6076 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 8 of 68 14 February 2011 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your comments, Meelämmchen, and I've wanted to tell you I think your English is amazingly solid, by the way. It's very difficult to tell you from a native speaker :)
Yep, the authors have their diplomas in superfluousness, don't they! I read the Kundenrezensionen at Amazon.de when I bought the book and I was prepared for some excessive translations. There's German words that I think are a bit veraltet, like "Güter" for "goods" when most of us would just use "Waren". but I figure if I take everything with a grain of salt I can still get some use out of the book. linguee.de is helpful for double-checking -- it would be a great learning excercise to pick the book apart :D If I have time, that is. It won't be my main text. My main thing I've decided will be a Goethe Fernkurs. Should be getting my first set of materials next week. EDIT: you know, now that I think about it I think there is a difference between "Waren" and "Güter". "Güter" are commodities and "Waren" is the general term "goods"-- Nevertheless, the book still translated "goods and services" strangely... "Güter und Dienstleistungen" is probably not the best choice :) Edited by Sunja on 14 February 2011 at 1:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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